With the confluence of electronic communications, data, and computing services, (collectively, services) there arises a need to bridge the disparate network infrastructures supporting these services and to address resulting new opportunities and challenges. A wireline network (WLN) employs a structured transmission medium, including copper wire, fiber optic cable, and other defined waveguides. By comparison, a wireless network can be any network with a physical layer that permits constituent devices to communicate using an unstructured transmission medium, such as the atmosphere, or space. Wireless networks have developed within two formerly distinct spheres: wireless wide area networks (WWAN), which were cast in the formal likeness of wireline telephony networks; and wireless local area networks (WLAN), which are often informally structured, if at all, having coverage zones of at least three of magnitude less than a WWAN. Currently popular WWAN networks can provide mobile wireless services, as specified by the AMPS, D-AMPS, PCS, GSM, and UMTS wireless mobile service standards. A growing diversity of WLAN standards describe the physical-to-network architectures of fixed wireless services, with devices operable with WLAN frequently being capable of being operable with more than one type of fixed wireless service. Dual-mode devices were developed to meet the diverse needs of those using both WWAN and WLAN systems.
Dual-mode services are becoming attractive to mobile operators and their subscribers because of three trends: a growing population of mobile subscribers, the prevalence of home broadband connections, and the availability of low-cost, home wireless access points that support local wireless networking. To satisfy this evolving need, technology manufacturers are developing and introducing into the marketplace, dual-mode devices, that is, devices capable of communicating over mobile radio networks, such as mobile phone networks, and wireless local area networks, such as those found in the increasingly popular “hotspots,” or access zones for wireless networking, frequently providing the myriad of services available over the Internet.
A dual mode device can offer advantages over a single mode device. First, although mobile wireless systems may provide mobile wireless services to the high-mobility receiving stations of subscribers within a broad geographic area, they bear the disadvantages of poor indoor reception and uneven signal availability, particularly in dense urban environments hilly terrain. Second, fixed wireless systems can deliver a vast range of broadband services to stationary or low-mobility receivers located indoors, within a broadcast zone (e.g., hot spots or hot zones), but are disadvantaged by sharply-limited signal range, security and billing concerns, and the uncertainties arising from proprietary ownership and non-uniform product availability. Thus, a dual-mode device can enable a mobile service subscriber to switch from mobile wireless services to fixed wireless services, for example, in an area of poor mobile wireless service coverage. In addition, with a dual-mode device, using dual-mode services, mobile wireless service subscribers may make voice calls when outdoors in the ordinary manner, using the facilities of the subscribed mobile wireless service at the standard tariff rate. While indoors or in a remote geographic location where a signal compatible with the subscribed mobile wireless network is unavailable, a dual-mode device may permit customers to make and receive voice calls using a fixed wireless network. To reflect the offloading of the subscriber's call bandwidth from the mobile wireless service provider's to a less-expensive fixed wireless network and the Internet, the mobile wireless provider may offer the mobile wireless subscriber lower tariff rates when using a fixed-wireless link. Also, a dual-mode device makes possible voice call handoff and transfer of communication links as a subscriber roams between mobile wireless and fixed wireless systems. Furthermore, dual-mode devices and services create an opportunity for subscribers or vendors who wish to assist a third party with obtaining provider-authorized allocations of mobile wireless voice or dual-mode services. Nevertheless, there is a substantial need to provide apparatus and methods rendering the desired degree of security to protect a mobile wireless provider infrastructure from Internet-based threats, as well as to safeguard provider network operator for their subscribers from interlopers and miscreants.